Jesus said, “There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
John 15.13
Love is a verb. Jesus isn’t talking about having friends but about being a friend. Liberation theologians have a term for laying down one’s life—acompoñar. It doesn’t mean martyrdom, though that my happen. It means accompanying each other, entering into the life circumstances of one’s community.
Some of the people we accompany are members of our own families and parishes with whom we have never seen eye-to-eye. Minimally, love challenges us to tolerate one another. More fully, love challenges us to talk to one another and learn how we practice our faith. Most fully, love challenges us to encounter one another, to honor each other’s paths to the Holy One.
Resolve as an individual or as a group to reach out to some of Jesus’ friends who are not yet friends of yours.
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